A large regional payer picked a vendor for a new solution, found it wasn’t the right fit, and then called the company that had finished third. That company had spent its time showing up in the payer’s world, in webinars, on LinkedIn, and on panels the payer cared about. The call it got was that visibility paying off, and it’s the clearest picture I know of how payer deals actually get won.
Knowing When a Payer Is Really Pipeline
Some of the companies I work with count payers as pipeline long before those payers are anywhere near a buying decision. A payer who has seen a few LinkedIn posts or sat in on a webinar has entered the company’s orbit, but nobody has pitched them, nobody has talked through a specific need, and nobody on the payer side has said what happens next. Counting that payer as pipeline makes the forecast look healthier and the sales cycle look longer, which may be part of why healthcare deals sit more than a year in the pipeline.
I’d draw the line at a real conversation. A payer becomes pipeline when there’s a specific need on the table, a named person involved in evaluating it, and a next step on the calendar. Before that point the payer is an audience, and the work is building a relationship, not working a deal.
Where the Relationship Starts
Payer relationships get built in the marketing phase, well before anyone qualifies as pipeline. Consistent LinkedIn posting, a regular newsletter, email campaigns, webinars, and thought leadership give a payer repeated, low-pressure reasons to know a company’s name and trust its point of view. That same work does two jobs later on, getting a company into the RFP and helping it move deeper into the process once it’s there.
One client I work with closed a deal with a very large regional payer that first learned about the company through its webinars and LinkedIn content. That visibility led to several speaking spots on panels with a well-known organization the payer was heavily involved with, which put the company on the payer’s radar. Those speaking engagements were built on consistent LinkedIn posting, newsletters, email campaigns, webinars, and thought leadership.
When the payer issued its first RFP for a solution, the company made the top three.
A Committee Decides, So the Relationships Have to Be Plural
Most payer RFPs are decided by a full committee, and the solution has to check every box that committee is looking for. Getting to the top three still leans heavily on relationships built before the formal process began, because by then the people on the committee already understand what the company does and why it’s credible.
A recent survey helps explain why. In a 2026 survey of 321 digital health decision-makers by the Peterson Health Technology Institute, 38% of the 182 purchasers using performance-based contracts cited the inability to independently verify vendor-reported outcomes as a challenge (PHTI, 2026 State of Digital Health Purchasing). When claims are hard to check, it makes sense that a committee would give extra weight to companies it already knows.
Procurement sits in that process too, and the relationships there matter just as much. It belongs in the marketing and growth strategy from the start, with the same consistent, useful content that reaches the clinical and executive leaders.
Staying in the Room After the Decision
The company in this story didn’t win that first RFP. It kept marketing to the relationships it had built at the payer, and when the solution the payer chose turned out to be the wrong fit, the company was brought in afterward. The deal that closed came after the loss, through relationships that outlasted it.
In this case the lost RFP paused the pursuit, and the company that kept showing up was the one the payer turned to when the first choice fell short.
The foundation under all of this is a regular social media presence and a monthly newsletter filled with useful, non-promotional content. Everything else gets layered on top of it, including the speaking engagements, campaigns, and webinars that put a company in front of a payer’s committee. The question worth asking is who at each target payer, procurement included, would recognize the company’s name today.
